The xml-keyval package is designed to work with XML documents which describe very simple key/value relationships. This key/value relationship described can then be translated into real code that needs to look up values for particular keys (for example, configuration files and command line arguments come to mind). In addition to generating the code, documentation can also be generated from the same key/value definition file.

This allows a developer to maintain a single document describing the configuration file for a application, and then have the necessary code and documentation updates occur automatically at the time the software is built.

The following command line tools are provided to accomplish this task: